Cave of Horrors
by Jaal Ama Darav
Summary: Within a cave in Heleus, Cora encounters a horror she thought was over two million light years away.


**Cave of Horrors**

Seetsha, an Angaran world that was considered habitable, with some terraforming, but projects never got through.

Seventy two hours ago, an Angara team headed to the site of a signal which didn't match Angara or Initiative patterns. They vanished with no further contact. Worried, Evfra sent the Pathfinder and her team there to find out what happened.

* * *

Sakura Ryder- black shoulder-length hair blowing in the wind, blue eyes focused downrange, and her blue Angara-designed armor covering most of her dark skin; took point walking towards a cave.

Jaal Ama Darav, her Angara teammate and lover, was to her left. He wore his black armor and carried his modified Kett sniper rifle.

Cora Harper, her other Human teammate with blond hair and wearing blue and white armor, was to her right.

* * *

Once they entered the cave, it looked like one would expect a cave to look like- rocks, stalactites, and stalagmites.

They descended several dozen meters and made a left turn down a passageway.

Cora's shotgun-mounted flashlight swept over a puddle of deep blue on the cave floor. "Ryder, that's-"

Sakura quickly activated her scanner, swept it over the puddle, and read the scan results. Her eyes widened. "Angaran blood."

Jaal exhaled loudly. "I have a bad feeling about this, Sakura."

The Pathfinder nodded. "This amount suggests a serious injury that would become fatal if not treated soon, we need to move quickly."

Sakura quickened her pace, Cora and Jaal beside her.

The very air seemed to darken, become cold and foul, like one would expect from the horror vids with an area containing an ancient evil.

Ahead, a silvery-blue wall appeared to create a dead end.

Jaal looked confused. "There's no records of an Angaran installation here, and that doesn't match any of our designs, not even the old ones."

As the team approached, Sakura activated her scanner, and scanned the wall. She read over the results. "Definitely not Angaran, Jaal. This wall is reading as-" she had to double check, "between six-seven hundred years old. And made of materials not known to Heleus."

As of on cue, a seam opened up, and a small section slid open.

Sakura shook her head. "If we see monsters, we're out of here. Kett are enough to worry about."

Cora nodded. "That's why I have a shotgun, for close encounters."

The team stepped inside, alert.

The first room was made of curved metal along the walls and floors at angles that induced a sense of vertigo. They cautiously continued through the next doorway.

Jaal took a step back. "Stars...no..."

Cora swore. "By the Goddess!"

Sakura saw the body on the floor by the wall, an Angara, and a pool of blood around him. Her attention turned to the walls, which were covered in writing she knew even before she started scanning wasn't ink. "Blood. Its written in blood. 'We aren't meant to know the truth'." She saw Jaal had paled, his purple skin having lost some color. "Stay close to Cora." Sakura looked around the room, the writing was everywhere.

 _What happened here?!_ Cora had such a tight grip on her shotgun she swore she heard the metal creaking. "My huntress training is telling me something is seriously wrong here and we should leave."

Sakura looked at Cora. "It is likely right, this place smells and feels like death."

The team headed towards the nearest door leading to another room, and it opened.

A horrific scene awaited. Blue pedestals with spikes on them, worse was what were impaled on them.

Angara, the missing team, minus the one dead behind them.

Except they looked all wrong. What should have been eyes that looked like looking into galaxies was instead a glowing dull blue. Their skin had shriveled and turned a lifeless gray, blue glowing tubes ran under the skin on their chests, and their once graceful neck flaps had tubes running along them.

Cora stood, eyes wide and hands trembling. _How are they in Andromeda?!_

The spikes retracted and the bodies twitched before pulling themselves off the spikes.

Cora's Asari huntress training kicked in, shaking off her shock. "Take them down!" She fired several blasts, taking down one of the Huskified Angara.

Bioelectric charges zipped through the air.

With seconds to react, Cora holstered her shotgun and quickly put an arm and palm facing outward, with one upward. A biotic barrier formed, protecting herself and Jaal from the electrical bolts. She turned her neck to look to her left behind.

And saw Jaal frozen in place, shaking and eyes wide, a look of terror on his face.

 _Shit!_ She looked at the incoming monstrosities. "Sakura! Behind me!"

Sakura dove into the protection of the barrier, the lightning bolts missing her.

The Husks were closing in at an alarming pace, shrieking all the way.

Seeing both her teammates were behind her, Cora pulled her arms back, drawing her barrier in, palms splayed out. And gathered biotic energy for a massive Push Field. "Die, you Goddess damned monsters!"

Just like that, it was over in a blue flash. The monsters were hurled back, along with anything not bolted down, and slammed into a large door.

It opened, revealing even more horrors. More of the creatures, vaguely resembling the races of the Milky Way Cora had seen.

"Run!" Cora grabbed Jaal by the arm, motioning to Sakura to follow. "Just run!"

Cora carried Jaal piggyback, using her biotics to sprint faster than any normal Human could, Sakura doing likewise. They kept going, ignoring the horrific shrieks, howls, growls, and roars behind them.

Cora didn't dare look back. Not even when they escaped the cave, when Sakura called Kallo to prepare for takeoff, or when they jumped up to the Tempest's landing ramp.

Only when she was safely inside did she allow herself to fall to her knees in exhaustion, Sakura tending to Jaal, and looked at the closing ramp.

There was only one thought running through Cora's mind.

 _Husks. Goddess-damned Husks in Andromeda!_

* * *

 **A/N-**

 **A 1,000 words or less prompt fic I posted first on Deviantart. The prompt was "genre blender' and I got "Sci-Fi/Horror". It is also a little sneak peak at an idea and fanfic I have for my Andromeda Challenge Fanfics series.**

 **Considering Cora's history, and what happened in Mass Effect 1, I wonder if she has ever dealt with Husks? Maybe they didn't know exactly what they were, or she found out later on just before the Initiative, but that'd be one horror show!**

 **As for the Angara that wrote on the walls in blood, it is based off an idea I have for the Reapers. I really didn't like what was done in Mass Effect 3 with the Catalyst, and the explanation for the Reapers was so badly done in my opinion, so I decided I had to return to the horror roots of Mass Effect 1, and made their 'answers' to our questions about why they do what they do be done in a way that our 'mortal minds' would understand. Anyone who learns the actual truth...ends up going insane and more than likely to end up meeting the same fate as that poor Angara…**


End file.
